The rise of Euro-journalism : the media and the European Communities, 1950s-1970s

Abstract

The thesis traces the rise of Euro-journalism. It argues that the Euro-journalists - a group of influential journalists in Brussels and across Western Europe - were instrumental in shifting the representation of the European Communities in Western European media, from marginal international organisation in the 1950s to sui generis 'European' polity and incarnation of 'Europe' in the 1970s. In the 1950s, Western European media overwhelmingly considered the European Communities as one among many international organisations working for Western European cooperation. The Communities did not stand out among many 'European integration' projects ranging from liberal to Gaullist to communist. However, by the 1970s Western European media largely presented the Communities as a 'European' polity in the making. What explains this astonishing transformation and emergence of the European Communities in Western European media? The thesis puts the Euro-journalists at the centre of its analysis. It argues that the Euro-journalists adopted the sui generis 'European integration' narrative in the 1950s and early 1960s. The narrative presented the European Communities as a 'European' polity in the making, not as a normal international organisation. The thesis shows how the Euro-journalists helped spread the sui generis 'European integration' narrative in Western European media. It also places their advocacy in the changing political and economic context of the postwar decades. By the 1970s, mainstream Western European journalism had adopted Euro-journalism and the sui generis 'European integration' narrative as the standard way to cover the European Communities. Western European journalists, in a joint effort with Western European elites, tried to educate 'European' citizens about the emerging democratic 'European' political system. They mounted repeated campaigns for 'European integration', particularly during the 1979 direct elections to the European Parliament. The thesis provides some evidence that the actual influence of such campaigns on the general public in Western Europe was limited.